During the excitement and bustle, Mr. Chrysler also
sometimes fell into the modest society of Josephte.
The girl seemed sad at these times, and to be losing
the serene peace which at first seemed her characteristic.
He remarked this to Madame Bois-Hebert one day as he
met her sitting in the shades of the pine-walk reading
a devotional work.

Madame was a figure still able to command as well
as to attract respect. Dignity and ability had
not yet departed from her face and bearing, and quietude
was the only effect of age upon her, beyond falling
cheeks and increasing absorption in exercises of religion.

“Does it not appear to you that your demoiselle
is sad?” he asked.

“It is true, monsieur; her mind is troubled
at present.”

“The cause is some cavalier.”

“You judge correctly. Benoit does not wish
her to marry as she desires. And though he wishes
her to unite herself to a brute compared with her
cavalier, yet the latter is himself an individual of
no consequence, and she has been well advised to relinquish
him.”

“Who is it advises that?”

“Her friends, who see in her a more lovely destiny.
The dear child will make perhaps a Saint. You
do not know the expiations and indulgences she has
earned these several years by prayers and devotions,
her pure nature, her admirable conduct. She is
not for the world, but for God.”

“What did Josepthe herself think?”

That which Madame had said of her nature was correct
enough. She was a delight to the sisters in their
sad, austere lives. “She is like an angel,
and has the movements of one,” they said.
Very unlike to, for instance, the daughters Jalbert,
those bold and idle girls, whose steady occupation
was tom-boying scandalously with chance young men,
and jeering impudent jeers at everybody.

Her haunts were in removed and shady nooks, such as
the little dell behind the log cabin of the Le Bruns.
There, one hot afternoon he found her sitting under
the shade of the windmill, dressed as usual in neat
black, and as usual lately, pale. The little ones
ran, sat and played around her; Henri, Rudolphe and
Elisa in the pride of their enterprise tugging the
long beam by which horse or man in the preceding century
had turned the conical cap of the mill; their efforts
cracking and shaking the crazy roof, but availing
nothing except to disturb a crow or two near by, among
the white birches through whose clusters gleamed the
River in the sun.

What brought Josephte to the Le Brun dell?

Et quoi! She was weeping.

Those little children saw not her silent tears.
Chrysler beheld them—­crystalline drops
on pale, soft cheek, emblems of pure heart and secret
sorrow; but she checked them when he drew near and
sat up composed.